Comcast and Disney renew carriage deal
Contract for popular webs spans at least eight years
After more than a year of stalemated negotiations and extended deadlines, Comcast has agreed to renew its contracts with Disney's ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic and ESPN News for at least eight years. Those networks will generate the biggest revenues for Disney.
But the clause that resolved the biggest barrier to the deal committed Comcast to moving the Disney Channel from pay to basic, making the network available to all of Comcast's basic subscribers. Comcast had resisted the Disney Channel's move to basic because, with the network as a pay service, the cable operator shared the pay TV revenues with Disney. As a basic network, Disney Channel collects monthly license fees in the 70¢-a-subscriber range, making it one of the most expensive networks in cable.
Comcast has also agreed to carry Disney's two newest cable networks, Soap Net and Toon Disney. Disney and Comcast declined to discuss the particulars of the deal, but one source says the contract is similar to the agreement Disney signed in May with Time Warner, which mandated a seven-year term for Disney Channel as a basic network, an eight-year deal for Soap Net and a six-year term for Toon Disney.
In exchange, Disney will renew a retransmission agreement that allows Comcast cable systems to continue carrying a number of Disney-owned ABC TV stations without any extra cost. The lead station in the deal is WPVI Philadelphia because Philadelphia is where Comcast has its headquarters and where its cable system dominates the city.
